


playing alive

by candydust



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, a tiny bit of kenma being a lil anxious but its nothing, fluffetyflufffluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7302916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candydust/pseuds/candydust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenma has always loved Kuroo. But he falls in love with him when he sees him play - and Kuroo has always loved the perfect setter with the analytical toss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	playing alive

********

Kenma first fell in love with Kuroo when he saw him playing volleyball. 

Oh, he’d _liked_ Kuroo. He’d been infatuated with Kuroo for years before that, ever since they were children living beside each other and sharing everything about themselves. But he’s always been able to compartmentalize his emotions. To ignore them. 

“Come to my match,” Kuroo asks when he’s in his first year of junior high and Kenma is in his last year of middle school. “You can join the team next year with me. It’ll be awesome.”

“I don’t like sport,” Kenma reminds him, even though he’s watched Kuroo set and receive against a wall with growing curiosity for a year and a half now. 

Kuroo smiles. He always smiles with his whole self, his mouth moving with his eyes, two dimples appearing on his cheeks. “You’ll like volleyball. Volleyball is like… volleyball is like that feeling when you’re playing a new video game and you defeat the first boss and sure, it might not be that hard compared to the one in world eight, or whatever, but you’re still super proud because you defeated him. You can move on. So come watch me play? Please? And then join the team with me.”

“Fine,” Kenma says. He keeps his eyes trained on his PSP, although he does let the tiniest of smiles slip past his lips. 

***

On the court, Kuroo looks alive. He’s always moved with the grace and fluidity of a cat, the sort of sneering tom Kenma sees in back alleys, streetwise and far smarter than it looks. Soaring through the air, focus in his eyes and vitality sparkling at his fingertips like lightning, he’s never been more elegant. 

And _powerful._ The ball hits the other side of the net with a smack, and Kenma jumps in his seat from the shock of the noise. It bounces off the court and Kuroo yells in excitement, holding his hands out for the boy beside him to hit in a high five. 

On the court, Kenma falls in love. 

The whistle blows, one long blast, and Kuroo’s side bursts into cheers again. Kuroo bounces from player to player, eyes screwed up, fists bunched, “ _We won! We won!”_ On his lips. His head flies around, eyes finding Kenma’s even in the crowded spectator seats. “Ai! Kenma! We won, look, we actually won!”

Kenma stands on impulse. The feeling of _love, love, love,_  thunders through his veins like wildfire in his blood. “Well done!” He yells, hands cupped to his mouth. “Well done!”

Kuroo gapes for a second and then slams his hand into the back of a teammate. “Yeah! Yeah!”

***

Kenma doesn’t get to play in a game until his first year of high school. 

He’s played in practice matches in junior high. But in junior high he didn’t like being part of the starters, and actively avoided being made a regular - the pressure of the court would be far too much. He can hardly handle the team as they are. He can’t handle a match. 

That’s what the surly coach says. 

And Kenma believes him. 

“You’re the most talented setter we have,” Kuroo insists with a frown of annoyance on his face. “I don’t know why that asshat can’t _see_ that.”

Kenma shrugs. He’s beginning to think of dyeing his hair, just for a change, and now it’s his last year in junior high and Kuroo’s joined Nekoma and he doesn’t think he’ll join the volleyball team next time around. “I don’t think I’m that great.”

“You _make_ yourself ordinary just so he won’t put you on the team,” Kuroo says with a frown on his face. “If you would just show him what you can do, _really_ do, he’d put you in and take out stupid Haruka.”

“Don’t want to play in a real match,” says Kenma listlessly. He tears a little off his sandwich, squeezing the bread flat between finger and thumb and tossing it to the pigeons. “It looks too stressful.”

But then Kaoru, the third-year setter, trips over an untied lace in the final set. The coach, old Nekomata now instead of the sour-faced coach from junior high, calls a timeout to deal with it, Kaoru with tears in his eyes and thousands of apologies tripping over his tongue. 

The team troop off the court. Kuroo has been a regular since first year and a starter since the beginning of this year (and part of Kenma hates that, hates that he’s forced to watch Kuroo at his most beautiful every time they have a match). His eyes stick to the back of Kenma’s neck, and even though Kenma can’t see him, he _knows_ what Kuroo is saying. _Go on. Go on. Volunteer yourself. Go on._

Nekomata is different. His eyes have seen many generations of Nekoma students grow from first to second to third years, and his eyes have seen many setters and spikers and aces and liberos, and Kenma feels the weight of them like a ton on his back. 

Kuroo nudges Kenma’s foot with his own. 

Kenma clears his throat. “I… um, I can set.”

One of the third years, his hair sticking almost vertically up from his scalp, glares mistrustfully at Kenma. “You’re only a first year. And none of us have ever practised with you.”

True. Kenma has never asked them to practice, never come to them with a ball in his hands and hope in his eyes. 

(Kuroo is the exception. Kuroo is always the exception.)

“And this is the _finals,”_ says another third year petulantly. “We could go to Nationals if we just win this set!”

He doesn’t know what makes him say it. Perhaps it’s Kuroo, his hand grounding Kenma with his fingers looped around Kenma’s wrist. Or maybe it’s just to _prove them all wrong._ (A selfish part of him wants to join Kuroo in that paradise, that heaven of adrenaline and sweat and rawness where everything seems heightened and Kuroo is at his most perfect.) “I know I can set to you.”

In the astonished silence - that little first year actually _spoke?_ \- Nekomata bursts into a bellowing, booming laugh. “Okay, Kozume. Show me what you’ve got.”

Kuroo laughs delightedly and squeezes Kenma’s hand. “You can do it,” he whispers into Kenma’s ear, lips brushing his cheek and making him squeak in shock. 

Yaku, the second year libero, nods seriously. “Good luck.”

Kenma steps onto the court with the taste of fear in his mouth and the weight of the Nationals on his back, and everything changes. 

The crowd is louder over the line. Everything is brighter. He suddenly sees the scoreboard like it’s been branded into the back of his brain - his vision narrows to just himself and the scowling opponents, obviously irritated that something so ridiculous has upset their momentum in the final set. Nationals hangs in the balance. Nekoma have two points to score before they reach 20 and a tie. Two points. 

The third year with the vertical hair serves. The silence of the court almost deafens Kenma - 

“Out!”

_No, of course not, he learned that serve -_

The ball lands just inside the boundary line. Although it shouldn’t make a sound, it does, and the soft slap of rubber against wood almost bursts Kenma’s eardrums with the noise. 

The ball is everything. 

Beside him, Kuroo is grinning that grin of his. The tomcat grin. His eyes change when he’s on the court, but Kenma doesn’t know if anyone else has noticed - they get sharper, smarter, stealthier. _Toss to me,_ he says through his open stance. _Toss to me, and I’ll score._

“Chance ball!”

Kenma runs wordlessly, hands already lifted the way he always sets to Kuroo. Here it’s different. Here, he can hear the ball hit the pads of his fingers. He can hear Kuroo’s smile as he soars through the air, and he can even hear the third years’ eyes widening as he makes the perfect set.

They score. 

And when Yamamoto runs up, Kenma’s eyes see supple muscles shifting in his arms, legs bent and ready to jump. He _sees_ the perfect set in his mind. 

They score. 

The ball slams down again and again and again and again, and Kenma has never felt so elated as he pushes the ball into the air. Again and again. He sees Nekomata shouting encouragement - he can’t hear it over the sound of Kuroo’s elation. 

A sweaty arm slings around his shoulder. 

“You look perfect here,” Kuroo tells him quietly as the rest of the team scream themselves hoarse because of the nationals. 

“It’s _your_ court,” Kenma says. He doesn’t like the praise, he never does, but he likes the warmth of Kuroo next to him. 

Kuroo laughs, soft and full of joy. “Those people will go home remembering the blow-in setter from Nekoma that tossed as if he’d been playing since the start. Those people will go home knowing that Nekoma has a secret weapon. They’ll go home knowing that number five is someone to look out for.”

“No, they won’t.”

And then there’s the flutter of a kiss, adrenaline-fuelled and full of happiness and the action of a moment. Kenma barely has time to peck back, his brain swirling with uncharacteristic befuddlement, when Kuroo pulls away. He looks devilish. “Trust me. They will.”

(They do.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> pls follow clearfullydearfully.tumblr.com to see more of this nonsense and also come yell at me about haikyuu and ppl being gay i promise i appreciate it


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